Forum: Why Connecticut needs a raise

By Kevin Burgos

Published 6:21 pm, Thursday, April 7, 2016

Connecticut’s cost of living is far too high. For the last 10 years I have struggled to support my family making less than $15 at Dunkin’ Donuts. And although I am an assistant manager, most weeks I am only scheduled to work for one day. My paycheck comes nowhere close to covering the cost of taking care of my four children and myself, and as a result I had to take up a second job to try to stay afloat on bills. Even with two jobs I am forced to depend on state-funded services like health care and Section 8 while large corporations take in huge profits.

In Connecticut, we pay the price, hundreds of millions of tax dollars annually — while living in a world where Wall Street executives make more in bonuses annually than all low-wage workers combined. It just doesn’t add up.

In a time when services are regularly slashed from the budget, SB391, the Low Wage Employer Fee, would generate much-needed revenue to help the state to expand and improve critical services including child care and health care for the backbone of our economy — underpaid working families.

These corporations need to pay their fair share — it’s the right thing to do. With today’s minimum wage, many families are still hovering near or just above the poverty line. And with the high cost of living in Connecticut, minimum wage earners fall well below the poverty line. The truth is: if our minimum wage kept up with the growth of the economy since 1968, it would be somewhere near $22 an hour.

This fight has only just begun. States across the country are realizing that raising wages and getting businesses to pay their share will only help the economy. The math is simple: give workers higher wages, and there will be more money to put in the economy. Large corporations do, in fact, have the resources to pay their fair share; it just takes a push from us to get what we deserve. Even the U.S. president of McDonald’s has found that, when implementing higher wages, turnover is down and customer service is up.

Last year Connecticut took its first step toward addressing the poverty wages large corporations are paying to struggling families, like mine, when it established the Low Wage Advisory Board, tasked with assessing the revenues of a low-wage worker fee, and the impacts large corporations place on taxpayers when left to pay the difference of these unfair wages.

We work very hard to make ends meet for our families. The sacrifices we make every day don’t even compare to the small sacrifice it will take them to support SB391.

Without the Low Wage Employer Fee, Connecticut’s largest corporations will continue to pass the buck to taxpayers. To our opponents I say: We work hard, and we deserve fair wages.